Prayer While Scrubbing a Floor

Thank you for the privilege of scrubbing this floor.
Thank you for the health and the strength to do it.
That my back is straight and my hands are whole.

I can push the mop.
I can feel the hard surface under my knees when I kneel.
I can grasp the brush and let my energy flow down into it as I erase the dirt and make this floor bright and clean.

If I were blind I couldn't see the soil or the patterns of the tile or the slippery circles shining.
If I were deaf I couldn't hear the homely cheerful sounds of suds in the bucket, the crisp little whisper of brush or mop.
I would miss the music of doors banging and children shouting and the steps of people coming to walk across this bright expanse of floor.

Lord, thank you for everything that has to do with scrubbing this floor.

Bless the soap and the bucket and the brush and the hands that do it. Bless the feet that are running in now to track it. This I accept, and thank you for.

Those feet are the reason I do it.
They are the living reasons for my kneeling here---
half to do a job, half in prayer.

A floor is a foundation. A family is a foundation. You are our foundation.

Bless us all, and our newly scrubbed floor.

(a prayer by Marjorie Holmes, from I've Got to Talk to Somebody, God)